A Note on The Importance of Radical Marxist Views for
Contemporary Caribbean Societies

By Clarence F. Ellis, The Rodneyite Quarterly
Journal, 30 March 2000

Facing up to the failure of what he calls Communist Party-directed
socialism or what Noam Chomsky referred to as state socialism, Thomas
E. Weisskopf noted that social malformations in Russia and Eastern
Europe were worse than "most of us had previously been willing to
admit." (Weisskopf, 1992). The English speaking Caribbean
societies accordingly are now reluctant to embrace either Marxist
philosophical goals or socialist objectives especially as two of their
members-Guyana and Jamaica-fared badly with roughly hewn socialist
experiments and also because they are aware that their physical,
social and intellectual capital is still very undeveloped. This latter
factor makes them, in economic terms, very dependent on the
metropolis.

The consequence has been an embrace of market forces as the basis for
development. Generally the embrace has been inspired by the
association of democracy and the market as the condition for releasing
the energies of the people and therefore for ensuring economic growth
and development. This association has been emphasized as the basis for
prosperity in the metropolitan countries and has emerged as the
consensus that underpins the policies of the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank that provide assistance to the Caribbean
countries.

The weakness in the democracy / market embrace has been first the
uncritical application of economic theory, even mainstream theory, to
the development efforts of the Caribbean countries and, second, the
reluctance to examine closely the nexus between political and economic
relations as they exist in the Caribbean

The point of departure here is the stress made by Noam Chomsky that
the major political issue of our time is the democratic control of
industrial society. (Chomsky, 1970) The subtext of that imperative is
the need to institute arrangements to ensure the democratic control of
the corporate sector which has become a behemoth that determines
economic opportunities and fashions social values.

Western industrial society portrays itself as democratic without
assessing the relative weaknesses of political power in relation to
the growing dominance of the economic systems of private power and
private empires. The dominance is associated with structural features
that Chomsky highlights.

The first is the authoritarian cast of mind that is induced in large
parts of society that accept, often uncritically, acts taken in the
people's name. While much of this acceptance is the result of the
complexity of modern decision making, modern education is inadequate
to the task of preparing people for participation in decision making.
The second is the fact that in practice, only a narrow range of
decisions is subject to democratic control. Excluded from democratic
control are the institutions of commerce, industry and
finance. Decisions in relation to the operations of those institutions
are matters for the closed sessions of corporate boards.

Perhaps most important is the third factor which is Chomsky's
portrayal of the power of corporate media to influence political
decision making. Radical critiques of authoritarianism and board room
power are weeded out by a culture that does not tolerate deviant
reporting. Editorial board rooms do not instruct what should be
written. They just ignore material that does not conform. An upcoming
journalist quickly comes to realize what will determine a successful
career.

A similar process takes place in the discipline of
economics. Mainstream economics emphasizes neo classicism and
constrains enquiry within the domain of that paradigm. Dissenting
economists are dismissed as unscientific and woolly.

The influence of private power over political decision making is
further reinforced by financial control over political
organizations. This is evidenced in the contributions that
corporations make to political parties and in the constrained
behaviour of governments to avoid offending corporate
interests. Corporations also supply personnel to the political system
who wield (because of the authoritarian cast of mind referred to
above) much more influence than their numbers.

In the 1980s, after the oil crisis had threatened the expectations of
the corporate sector, a fourth feature of the political and private
power relations surfaced. It became necessary to reduce the size of
government, asserting classical libertarian principles for freedom in
an economic and technological environment that no longer has the
conditions for the flourishing of classical libertarian ideals. The
private economic system is concentrating power into fewer and fewer
firms. E-commerce which gives the appearance of encouraging open
competition is restricted to a technological elite and prospers on a
bubble of so far unrealized expectations.

It is this reality, extended to the corporate domination of the
globalisation agenda, that threatens democracy in the
Caribbean. Banana production in the Caribbean is being replaced by
production of bananas by corporate giants in Central and South
America. Technologies for the survival of small farmers and other
small producers are not developed. The viability of sugar production
in the Caribbean is intimately tied with the preparedness to continue
to subsidise European and American farmers. In the meantime, traffic
in, and production of, narcotics bastardise the power relations by
subverting both political and private systems of power with shortened
time horizons for achieving wealth.

It seems appropriate to revisit socialist goals despite the colossal
failure of state socialism in the 20th century. Weisskopf's
presentation is appealing and non-threatening to commonly held values.

2. Democracy: economic democracy that enables people to exercise
control over their own economic fate.

3. Solidarity: promotion of solidarity among members of communities
extending from the neighbourhood to the whole of society-encouraging
people to develop the sense and reality of themselves as social rather
than simply individual beings. (Weisskopf, ibid)

The critical factors here are the requirement to exercise control over
our economic future and the stress on community dimensions. The latter
raises the notion of the values of the cultures in the Caribbean which
are similar but not homogeneous. Jeremy Rifkin's inclusion of civil
society in the social framework is relevant here. (Rifkin, 1996). Also
relevant are the restoration of African and Native American belief
systems.

Radical Marxists offer a method for achieving a synthesis between
Weisskopf's polar opposites of homo economicus and homo socialis, a
participatory community person. William Dugger and Howard Sherman
outline the approach in the following:

On the

methodological level, critical Marxists do not agree with the
individualist methodology of neoclassical economics. Neither do they
agree with the collectivist methodology, used by Hegel to discuss the
state as if it were alive or by official Marxists to discuss a class
as if it had a will beyond its members. Critical Marxists use a
moderate relational or holistic view in which class relations are
quite real but must be supported by observations--not
assumptions--about the individuals in those classes. (Dugger and
Sherman, 1994)

The search here is for rigour in methodology which is available in the
inspiration that Radical Marxists drew from classical liberals who
were concerned with the imposition of the state to interfere with the
ability of man to enquire and to create. Truly human action, they
argued, is what flows from inner impulse. Man should love labour for
its own sake. In the highest form of society, labour is the means of
life and also the highest want in life (Chomsky, 1970).

Willis Harman and John Horman have noted that "within.....a few
centuries, the focus of interest shifted from the inner world to the
outer world-(from inner impulse to outer impulse my paraphrasing). All
but one of the [seven deadly] sins, sloth, was transformed into a
virtue. Greed, avarice, envy, gluttony, luxury and pride were the
driving forces of the new economy." (Harman and Hormon, 1990, p.47
). What the authors go on to argue is that the world's problems are,
in part, the result of the successes of the Western industrial
paradigm that thrived very blithely on the "six" sins.

This paradigm is associated with the patriarchal society that is
dominant in the West. It was not always so. Before then agricultural
societies were more MOTHER centered-more egalitarian, more democratic
and more peaceful. Also they were more reliant on the psychological
force of influence than on the power of domineering institutions. This
observation of history points to the fact that the cultural factors
cannot be omitted from the analysis. Feminism is broadened into a
wider matriarchal panorama.

Radical Marxists combine this attachment to the inner impulse with an
opposition to the organisation of production by the state. In
contradistinction to state owning socialists, they perceive liberation
from exploitation as the goal of the working class but it is a goal
that cannot be reached by a new directing class substituting itself
for the bourgeoisie.

The goal can be realised only when workers themselves form workers'
councils to organize their activities. (Chomsky, ibid) Radical
Marxists are very apprehensive of management by elites "however
dripping with soulfulness" those elites may be.

For the underdeveloped Caribbean countries, leads in this respect in
the industrial world are helpful. Developments in this respect have
begun. William Waters observes that:

"Democratic principles are being extended to workplace
participation and economic democracy. Economic democracy is worker
ownership, a position pushed mainly by European theorists. This
requires considerable restructuring of the economy-a task improbable
but not impossible as evidenced by the exciting social reconstruction
in the Basque country of Spain.........

Five principles may be drawn from this Mondragon experiment:

(a) Firms are structured for net job creation and local economic
development, not for individual or company gain.

(b) Labour has priority over capital....The ranking of the four
ingredients of a business firm,........capital, management, product
and workers is reversed.

(c) Worker participation in production is collegial. Each worker is a
member of a cooperative team. It is more difficult (but not
impossible) to apply this principle to privately owned firms than to
co-operative ones such as those in Mondragon.....The key idea in the
firm, as in the economy generally, is cooperation not competition.

(d) The firm enjoys an autonomy with regard to public owners. Both
government and private corporations pursue aims in honest
collaboration with each other.

(e) The firms' aims are subordinate to the demands of the common
good...........

Illustrations of collegial participation and economic democracy range
from a typical large Japanese firm to the highly developed team
control concept used in the production of Saab automobiles in
Sweden. Two American examples, the Olga Company, Inc. Van Nuys,
California, and the Rex works, Inc. Milwaukee are cited. (Waters,
1988)

American firms continue to be successful with worker ownership
arrangements. The size of the American economy does not require any
restructuring to accomodate these experiments. The point to be made
here is that democracy in the sense of having the capability to affect
one's future is progressing gradually without any major revolution.
Caribbean economies must necessarily tread carefully in this
direction, taking advantage of worker participation in production
whenever the possibility exists. Radical Marxists who follow in the
tradition of Classical Liberalists consider that freedom and variety
of experiences are the preconditions for human self realization. Rosa
Luxemburg argued that only the active participation by the masses
themselves in self government can bring about their spiritual
transformation from conditions which have been degraded by centuries
of bourgeois class rule. The errors committed by a liberated class are
infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest
central committees, she argued.

The importance of Radical Marxism in the Rosa Luxemburg tradition is
its revolutionary vision which will inform the relations in the
political system to develop similar participatory arrangements. To the
extent that the views - incorporate the classical liberalist emphasis
on inner impulse, the "six deadly" sins are eschewed. This is
crucial. To be an anarchist, Bukharin once said, one must first be a
socialist.

Similarly Radical Marxists must aim at bringing about changes in human
values and behaviour. If the influence of matriarchy causes the
dominance of patriarchy to give way to gender equity, the
psychological value structure changes and participation in companies
and councils becomes less destructive. As the intrinsic features of
the diverse cultures in the Caribbean are allowed to flower, bigotry
will subside.

The quote on methodology by Dugger and Sherman reminds us that all
this is in embryo conceptually. We know too little. Hence we should
explore these ideas a lot more, assured of one assumption-we are all
the same.

Clarence Ellis is an economist. He is a former Deputy Governor of
Guyana's Central Bank and Executive Director at the World Bank. He is
currently an Indepedent Consultant and frquent commentator on Guyanese
and Caribbean political and economic issues.
>

References

Dugger, William M. and Howard J. Sherman, "Comparison of Marxism
and Institutionalism" in Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xxviii,
No.1 March 1994. Reprinted in David L. Prychitko, Why Economists
Disagree, State University of New York Press, 1998.

Harmon, Willis and John Horman, Creative Work: The Constructive Role
of Business in a Transforming Society, Knowledge Systems Inc.,
Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1990.

Waters, William R., "Social Economies: A Solidarist
Perspective" in Review of Social Economy, Vol 46 No. 2,
Oct. 1988. Reprinted in David L. Prychitko, Why Economists Disagree,
State University of New York Press, 1998.

Weisskopf, Thomas E., "Toward a Socialism for the Future, in the
Wake of the Demise of the Socialism of the Past," in Review of
Radical Political Economics, Vol.24 No 3&4, Winter 1992. Reprinted
in David L. Prychitko, Why Economists Disagree, State University of
New York Press, 1998.

Copyright (c) 2000 Guyana Caribbean Politics.

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